The Unspeakable Choice

Last summer, the state of Nebraska made it legal to abandon a child. Then the children started flooding in—eleven a day at one point, from all over the country. So are there more bad parents, or more monstrous kids, than anyone knew? Or is it more complicated than that?

She had to lie. She stood in the window of the little white house and looked outside at her boys on the lawn.

It was warm for September, and they seemed happy, throwing a baseball in the afternoon light under a huge Nebraska sky. The hill behind them sloped away to the Missouri River, and beyond it the plains of Iowa stretched toward the eastern horizon, with rocky bluffs at the far edge like sentinels against the dawn. Her own dawn was coming. All she had to do was lie.

Lavennia Coover took a breath and stepped outside. The sun streamed over her shoulders as she walked toward the boys, casting shadows in their direction. “Guys,” she called out. It had to sound casual. “Let’s go for a ride.” For a moment, the words seemed to hang in the air, and she wondered if they already knew, but then they were ambling toward the pickup, oblivious to what was coming.

Yes, she thought. It’s happening.

She closed them into the backseat and steered down the long driveway through acres of corn, the boys babbling mindlessly about sports and whatever else—Lavennia paid no attention. She felt numb and jittery all at once, every fiber in her body strained in anticipation of what might come, some lapse in the environment, some change in the atmosphere, some hint that the trick was up. At the base of the driveway, she turned onto the river road, heading toward town. Time was everything, and she played for more.

“You guys hungry?” she asked, pulling into a McDonald’s drive-thru. They shouted their orders, and she smiled. Today, she thought, they can have anything they want—just keep them distracted. She ordered a Big Mac and nuggets, Cokes and fries, passing the cups and bags into the backseat, and in the crinkling of wrappers and happy chatter, she slipped onto the highway, heading south toward Omaha. Sixty miles to go.

“Where are we going?” Colby asked suddenly.

“Just driving,” she said. She braced herself, but they let it pass, rummaging through their bags of food, and she exhaled, watching the miles tick past: five, then ten; fifteen, now twenty. Silently, she began to pray: Please, God. Just let us get there.

It would all depend on Skyler, of course. Everything did. He was the youngest of her three, only 11, but he missed nothing and trusted less. Eventually, he would finish his nuggets and his fries and his Coke, and he would look up and out the window, and in that instant he would know. And then… Lavennia winced at the thought. Then, it was impossible to predict. He might leap from the truck onto the open road. He’d done worse. Or lunge into the front seat, pummeling her with his fists and feet, sinking his teeth into her arms. He’d done that before, too.

When she finally saw the exit in the distance, she angled the truck toward the ramp, glancing over her shoulder at Skyler… and there it was: the storm of recognition gathering on his face. His eyes narrowed, his fists clenched; the air seemed to withdraw around her. “You’re taking me to that place!” he shouted.

“No,” she said. “We’re just driving.”

“Yes, you are!” he screamed. “YOU LIAR!”

She looked back again, searching his face for the little boy within, but he was gone, consumed with fear and fury. For the first time, she felt a flash of alarm. The violence was coming. She reached for her cell phone and dialed quickly. “Hello,” she said, tears beginning to stream down her face. “I’m bringing my son. I need security to meet us.”

In the back, Skyler slumped into his seat. He began to cry, then plead. “Mommy,” he sobbed, “I’ll be good. I promise, I’ll be nice. I’ll do whatever you want.…”

She felt lost. She felt like turning around. She felt like holding him close, and crying together, and going home. She felt like dying. But she said nothing, and the truck fell silent. Up ahead she could see the hospital.

She was almost there. He was almost gone.

*****

it has never been easier to abandon a child. Over the past ten years, every American state has been working to make the process simpler. Simpler, that is, to haul a newborn baby into a police station, a hospital, or even a firehouse and just walk away—without signing anything or telling anyone your name, without providing any medical records or proof of custody, or even a reason why. For the first 200 years of our country’s history, to do such a thing was regarded as an abomination and a crime, punishable under a host of charges, from reckless endangerment to child abuse. Today, in all fifty states, it is every parent’s right, enshrined into law.

In theory these new laws, commonly known as safe havens, are written to protect newborns—and to prevent so-called Dumpster babies—by giving desperate parents a way out. The first safe haven was passed in Texas in 1999, after thirteen abandoned infants were discovered in a ten-month period, and as other states have followed suit, this Dumpster-baby scenario has become a rallying cry for the safe-haven movement: Faced with the specter of babies left in alleys, gullies, and backyards, few state legislators are willing to drag their heels or demand proof that the laws actually work. Yet after ten years, it is increasingly clear that “safe havens” are anything but.